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Rusty Muck

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Everything posted by Rusty Muck

  1. I genuinely don't buy that excuse for a second because there’s always people who confuse the affiliate as being the network. How many times have you seen an average viewer link a local Fox affiliate with the Fox News Channel? Or people get confused when a station changes network affiliations? Or the EPGs that don’t show the local logo for an affiliate but the network logo? Does the local branding really help and not become an impediment? WFXT de-branded to “Boston 25” because they explicitly wanted to remove any connection to Fox News as per what their audience believed and now we’re assuming that CBS, which wants to link CBS News to the O&Os, is giving up on doing that to WBZ? Come on. This whole “us ‘mericans are too good or not ready” for television branding conventions literally used in every other country on the planet comes off as a mere excuse not to even try. Who cares that diginets and the CW and Ion effectively rendered that excuse moot? People know MeTV is a thing and don’t need a “channel 69.13” brand slapped onto it.
  2. wbz.com is a redirect and a cosmetic move and will remain that way for the long term; CBS has perpetual ownership of the domain name per the SEC brand licensing guidelines (iHeart has to use "wbznewsradio.iheart.com"). The servers still point to cbsnews.com/boston. Except the rebranding is ongoing anyway. They're already beginning the process of renaming it "CBS News Boston" and, contrary to a lot of people wishing to think otherwise, "opt-in mandate", "flexible standardization" and "unlimited freedom" do not exist.
  3. A half-hearted rebranding that happened 15 years ago is not really applicable in the present day. NBC-WBTS was a nightmare mess of a station until they got to piggyback on the WGBX spectrum, and even then, they downgraded going from "NBC Boston" to "NBC 10 Boston" (10 of what?). WFXT was taken over by ownership that knew nothing about the Boston area and they sabotaged themselves. They're already pushing "WBZ News on CBS News Boston" both visually and contextually. It is very likely that the brand is slowly going to be phased out on a gradual basis until it is ultimately retired soon. The channel number is gone already.
  4. You may think that iHeart doesn't care, but they do. They easily could defect to WCVB or WBTS for news and weather partnerships if they can make more money off of it just like KYW radio did with WCAU. There is nothing binding WBZ with WBZ-TV, especially if a better content sharing deal comes forward. And what does WBZ-TV do then? Continue to share the same branding as a competitor or get with the times and distinguish yourselves for once? And honestly, the biggest mistake Les Moonves made during the sale of the CBS Radio stations was making that brand licensing deal with the shared call signs which forced this rebranding effort among the O&Os in the first place.
  5. There exists no such thing as "opt-in mandate" or "flexible standardization" or "unlimited freedom". This seems to be putting words in her mouth and making assumptions that her rebranding efforts -- which is reconciling the disparate brands of over a dozen stations in the entire group -- fell apart because of "unlimited freedom". Recycling voiceovers on KDKA from the prior package while the on-air appearance blasts you with "CBS News Pittsburgh" is not proving anything. Same with "WBZ News" being recycled here for the short term. I at least give Paramount Global credit for keeping their carbon footprints in check.
  6. Who knows why this interregnum is taking place, but tbh, the presence of two unrelated stations in the Boston market that both identify as "WBZ" is completely untenable. iHeart spent a lot of money to get WBZ radio and got an obscenely favorable brand licensing deal. You think they're happy about sharing the same brand as a TV station that is fighting for oxygen in the digital stratosphere?
  7. It's not terribly expensive to make station merch. Just saying... /sarc
  8. It looks like someone dug up the old WRCV logo which was used before NBC got yeeted from owning channel 3 in 1965.
  9. I’d pay more attention to WSB, now under the control of a disinterested private equity firm and with little incentive to have the station progress from being perpetually stuck in 1993.
  10. That runs entirely contrary to the core point of the restructuring, to merge CBS News into the O&Os. Plus WCBS-TV and CBS News have been tied at the hip since the days of Jim Freaking Jensen. The easiest explanation here is that WCBS management utterly and royally botched the rebrand. There is no excuse to keep any references to CBS 2 if the station outside of newscasts rebranded to “CBS New York” anyway. For the network flagship, this is just downright embarrassing. Wouldn’t be surprised if CBS gave KDKA the option to change the color palette to see if it could even be possible (and potentially incentivizing the graphics package as customizable to affiliates). And that’s pretty much it. In a few months, “KDKA-TV News” will be retired in favor of “CBS News Pittsburgh” (which is what it already is referred to in a visual sense).
  11. “From CBS News New York, this is CBS 2 News at 9” … god I felt sorry for Brian Lee having to read that sludge. And they didn’t rebrand away from “CBS 2 News” but the station is now “CBS New York”!?! How does THAT happen?? If I’m Wendy McMahon, I’m getting all the execs at WCBS-TV together and telling them, “You’re the flagship of the network. ACT like you’re the flagship!!” That file likely didn’t get cleared out of the master control automation in time. Not an uncommon occurrence after a rebrand.
  12. He’s basically begging Tegna and Apollo not to sue his sorry butt for breach of contract.
  13. As if the bland-o WCBS graphics and Enforcer were any better. The uniqueness of KCNC withered away when CBS stripped out the last of the NBC look back in 2003…
  14. Even when the Sinclair—Tribune deal died, Jessell called for further deregulation anyway. He’s a clown.
  15. Harry should know that there is no magic wand now that is going to be waved to save this deal. Let him debase himself with his “I never met a merger I didn’t like” stance.
  16. Byron bought his former employer (BNC) after they collapsed and used the distribution contracts (even on Pluto) for TheGrio.tv. So of course this comes off as payback and sheer pettiness on Roland’s part.
  17. So Soo arranged for multiple kickbacks with Roland, giving him multiple cross-platform crossovers with his own properties, and we’re just finding out about this? Did Roland hope he could become another Armstrong Williams?
  18. KDKA radio carries a format where the hosts are likely to say outrageous things. It wouldn’t have mattered if KDKA radio and TV were under the same umbrella, but they are not, and it’s a brand sharing with underlying liabilities. So of course KDKA-TV is going to remove the call letter branding and go by “CBS Pittsburgh”. It’s the path of least resistance. All this could have been avoided, by the way, if CBS ordered Entercom to change KDKA’s calls when it was sold. Sinclair made KOMO radio do just that when it was sold to Lotus, so nothing is sacred.
  19. It’s a brand that is shared with a now-unrelated AM station that created a PR nightmare for channel 2 when Wendy Bell was flapping her gums. “KDKA” became a liability then and it will when one of the other talkers on the AM station says something incredibly stupid and inflammatory. KPIX didn’t have a radio station sharing the callsign. That’s really why they kept the KPIX name for now. (WJZ will assuredly be doing the same as WJZ-FM doesn’t use the calls in their branding, but just have the equally boring black box logo.)
  20. KXTA is getting a rebrand? That’ll be interesting. Also the comment about “the star (in KTVT’s logo) is certainly the closest that we have to a logo across the group” by CBS’s VP for brand strategy and development… and it’s being RETIRED… that should really tell you something.
  21. Tegna has every right now to terminate the deal and sue him for breach of contract because the FCC issued this HDO. The buyout agreement actually contains that provision. h/t @Samantha So basically, Soo has next to no leverage against Tegna despite his huffing and puffing and crying and whining. They hold all of the relevant cards now.
  22. Rosenworcel didn’t explicitly say it in the order, but the retransmission fees mention does come off as addressing objections from the telecoms, in which they interpreted Apollo and SG as jointly benefitting from higher cable bills. All an ALJ needs to do is see the evidence and come to the conclusion this was an attempt to collude and game the system. I’m taken aback by Soo bullying the FCC to vote on the deal. He’s given the D commissioners every reason in the book now to vote “no”, so it’ll fail in at least a 2–2 tie. Is he hoping for it to fail so he can litigate and cry that the system is prejudiced against him? Or is he consumed by delusions of grandeur? Or both??
  23. Incredibly, Soo is yelling at the FCC to vote on the deal anyway instead of sending this to an ALJ. Because that’s exactly what you should do, said no one ever. Bullying the FCC chairperson to vote for your deal when she tacitly rejected it in the ALJ order might be THE ultimate galaxy brain move.
  24. Poker After Dark reruns from 2008 should be available on the DFS Program Exchange
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